Cisco Says Internet to Quadruple by 2016; Government and Industry Work to Keep Up
In 2016, more traffic will traverse global networks than in all prior years combined, and government and industry will have to work together to ensure efficient use of the spectrum to support all the new traffic, panelists said at the unveiling of the Cisco Visual Networking Index forecast Wednesday. Cisco estimates that the Internet will quadruple in size over the next four years, with annual global Internet Protocol traffic forecast at 1.3 zettabytes. That’s 1.3 trillion gigabytes, and it’s likely a conservative estimate, said Doug Webster, Cisco senior director-service provider marketing.
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The growth is due to more connected devices and users, faster broadband speeds and more rich media content like HD video streaming on mobile devices, the forecast said. It said all this data whizzing about the globe will pose a challenge to mobile operators, who will have to deal with a myriad of devices that are constantly moving. “The old ways of doing architectures no longer are valid in this era of the new normal,” Webster said.
"Our spectrum policy is going to have to emphasize more and more sharing spectrum,” said Daniel Weitzner, Office of Science and Technology Policy deputy chief technology officer-Internet policy. “The ability to have a single user in a single block of spectrum is really declining, simply because we only have a finite amount of attractive spectrum.” The White House is working hard to encourage partnerships between government and commercial users to encourage sharing “in a way to maximize the utility,” and get enough spectrum to enable ubiquitous 4G service and whatever comes next, he said. Freeing up spectrum for wireless services “will be key to serving underserved areas,” he said.
Spectrum scarcity isn’t the only concern, as it’s expensive to build out fast broadband to rural areas with low population density and income, said Kathleen Abernathy, chief legal officer at Frontier. “The capex investment that you make -- not just in the capacity that you're building to the home but then in your middle mile -- is daunting in rural America,” she said. “And as you're making that investment it’s for a long-term payoff,” even as “private capital markets look at that and say, ‘What are you doing for me today?'” The FCC and administration will need new programs to figure out the right regulatory model to ensure the highest penetration possible, she said. “Technology always outpaces government and the regulatory framework, so we're always playing catch-up on how to get there."
The Cisco forecast said that by 2016, there will be 3.4 billion Internet users -- about 45 percent of the world’s projected population. Even as Internet usage soars, 30 percent of the U.S. population doesn’t use the Internet at all, and the administration is very interested in who those people are and how to get service to them, Weitzner said. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has funded 45,000 miles of new fiber connections, mainly “middle-mile” fiber services that extend the Internet backbone to areas that are currently hard to reach, he said. The government has also put significant effort into adoption programs and computing courses that help Internet holdouts “understand what they can do with it,” he said.
Average Internet speeds in North America are expected to increase from 11 Mbps to 37 Mbps by 2016, the forecast said. This is lower than the 42 Mbps forecast for western Europe. But raw speed “may not tell us as much about the benefits that any given country is getting,” Weitzner said. The U.S. is routinely ranked in the top three countries in terms of the Internet’s contribution to gross domestic product, and that may be a better measure, he said.